


When I Was Made In Secret

by Nyssa23



Category: House M.D.
Genre: Gen, Infertility, Jewish Character, Judaism, Miscarriage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-16
Updated: 2010-08-16
Packaged: 2017-10-11 03:14:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/107736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nyssa23/pseuds/Nyssa23
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>WARNING: Possible triggers--infertility, implied miscarriage.</p><p>Cuddy experiences despair and hope in rapid succession.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When I Was Made In Secret

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Daysofawesome 2007, prompt "wanton."

"You look terrific. You've lost weight, haven't you?"

Dr. Lisa Cuddy looked up from the blinking display on the gym's elliptical machine. "What?"

The woman on the machine next to her grinned over her iPod headphones. "I usually see you here all the time, but you haven't been in the last few weeks. Still, you're looking great. What's your secret?"

Cuddy forced a smile onto her face. "Antioxidants. Lots of antioxidants." She hurriedly dismounted the machine and walked away. Once she was safely in the shower stall, she let herself cry.

***  
After work that night, Lisa Cuddy went home and turned on all the lights in the house. She went from her bathroom to her bedroom and pulled out every ovulation predictor, every pregnancy test, the magnifying slide she used to examine her saliva for signs of fertility, and piled them all in the center of her bedroom. She shredded the boxes, she smashed the slide, she bent the testing sticks until they snapped, she tore her temperature charts into confetti. She opened a window and threw her basal thermometer out into the yard like a javelin. At last, spent, she curled up on the floor and slept a dreamless sleep.

***  
It was a terrible habit; she knew it. But Cuddy could never resist walking past the nursery. There was a family gathered outside the viewing window that made her slow down for a second look. The proud father wore a trim beard and a blue knit _kippah_ and held the arm of an older man--the grandfather, no doubt--in a black hat and coat. A big sister all of three years old stood nearby in a pink dress, clutching a doll in one hand and waving at her new little sibling with the other. Cuddy smiled and kept walking.

***  
That night, Cuddy rummaged through her bookshelves until she found it: a slightly frayed black and white cardboard box, dusty with years of neglect. Carefully removing the lid, she saw the small but heavy book bound in white leather, still pristine after all this time, bearing the gold inscription: _Tanakh_.

She set the box aside and opened the book at random. The page fell open to Psalm 139:

_...For You created my reigns, You covered me in my mother's womb.  
I shall thank You for in an awesome, wondrous way I was fashioned; Your works are wondrous, and my soul knows it very well.  
My essence was not hidden from You, when I was made in secret, I was formed in the lowest parts of the earth..._

Lisa Cuddy clutched the book to her breast and wept.

***  
The next day, she walked to a pharmacy on her lunch break and bought a new ovulation predictor kit and a basal thermometer.


End file.
